We all think of ourselves as pretty smart. After all, we sent a man to the moon and can instantly send a message across the world. Unfortunately, we suffer from a nasty little thing known as the Overconfidence Effect, a bias that applies to almost everything we do, including judging our own intelligence. Overconfidence is one of the dozens of documented biases and shortcomings in human judgment and decision making. Brandon Carlson covers biases from the Availability heuristic, which causes us to associate an event's probability with its memorability, to the Affect heuristic, where a positive experience compels us to believe that the decision was good—regardless of the overall outcome. Brandon explains that understanding and planning for these biases can help reduce the impact they have on our daily decisions. We still may not be as smart as we think, but at least we have the tools to compensate.
Brandon Carlson
Lean TECHniques, Inc.
A self-proclaimed nerd, Brandon Carlson works for Lean TECHniques, Inc., an IT consultancy that helps teams deliver high-value, high-quality products to market. Since starting his career in 1995, Brandon has held positions from development and architecture to management—and he’s still learning. Passionate about elevating the performance of IT as a whole, he has helped numerous organizations from startups to Fortune 100 companies improve their product development and delivery systems. Brandon’s current interests include data-driven product definition/development and professionalism in the world of software development. He can be reached on Twitter and pretty much everywhere else on the web as “bcarlso.” Read his blog at bcarlso.net/.
Speaker Presentations
Wednesday, June 4, 2014 - 2:15pm
Projects & Teams
You’re Not as Smart as You Think: Improve Your Decision-Making Skills